Quoted article:

We often hear how it’s not Linux’s fault that apps and games don’t support it, or how bad UX is just different UX. Okay, let’s for a moment agree with that. And let’s for a moment ignore how a large group of the Linux community online these days act like unhinged gaslighting psychos and not useful at all to people with genuine questions.

But there’s also actual objectives reason not outside of the control of the developers that they refuse to focus on and instead decide to create the umpteenth tiling window manager instead. I’ll focus on Linux Mint and Cinnamon as that’s what I’ve been daily driving for a year:

1. No proper HiDPI support. Some apps look shit on a 4K monitor (Steam, GIMP) and the desktop itself does not provide any window scaling feature. Even the desktop glitches when connecting from a 1080p to 4K monitor (desktop icons go all opver the place, pixel-perfect rendering of open apps is ruined, etc)

2. No proper fractional scaling support. At least with NVidia cards, all games including all Steam games render on much smaller windows in windowed mode for games, you have to waste more electricity rendering at higher resolution just to get the game windows at a sane scale.

Some apps become unusable, such as “Youtube Video Downloader”.

Wayland was supposed to solve both issue 1 and 2, but at this point it’s a forever-project stuck in eternal beta and where the devs can’t even agree on and properly articulate what even Wayland is and isn’t and what it should and shouldn’t be responsible for.

Mint has some hacked solution for X but they don’t solve these issues.

3. No HDR support, at all, it’s the end of 2024…

4. Bluetooth support sucks (at least with Blueman manager): earbuds/speakers and gamepads that work just fine on Windows and Android, but on Linux randomly disconnect, refuse connecting requiring re-pairing, sometimes getting stuck in an endless disconnection-reconnection loop when trying to auto connect. At least on Linux Mint, there’s no way to disable automatic connections.

Tested with like 5 different bluetooth dongles, gamepads and even more earbuds. It just sucks.

5. Specifically with bluetooth earbuds: no proper way to use the high quality microphone of the earbuds you payed for, when using high fidelity audio for the headphone speakers. You need to switch audio profile to the shit quality Handsfree audio mode to make the microphone accessible.

I’ve tried this on 6 different earbuds and found a confirmation from the kernel devs online. Few years has passed and they still haven’t fixed it.

6. With the stock Linux Mint desktop, locking the screen is not secure:

If you wake from sleep, there will be a brief flash of all your desktop until the lock screen becomes visible again and anyone can record it’s content with their phone camera. So much for secure and private. Devs know about this issue for years and it’s still there, on Mint 22…

7. Linux Mint Software Manager was not secure for years:

It took them the release of version 22 to realize that enabling unverified flatpaks by default listed on their Software Manager provided by anyone on the internet was not a good idea and random people could easily put spyware on their software manager. Basic lack of competence.

There’s so much more I could talk about,

In fact, all in all, I’ve locally documented >100 bugs in the Linux Mint desktop and File Manager to bulk-report later when I actually have the time, just with the stock apps and desktop of Linux Mint. Granted 99% of these are visual or input glitches that don’t lock you from using certain features, but they do waste your time (sometimes minutes at a time).

I’ve used Linux on and off since the 2000s. It’s astonishing how much more janky Linux desktop has become since I last checked it in the early 2010s when it was WAY more stable than Windows. Now it’s the complete opposite: Windows 10-11 seems like a rock solid spyware, while Linux has become a janky mess that only has one thing still going for it: respects your privacy.

Even when using the arguably most stable desktop-based distro everybody praises, Linux Mint. I had ton of issues.

For reference, I did in fact give both GNOME and KDE a test run before going with Mint (Cinnamon). Those had way worse UX/UI and even more janky, I can’t believe they are the standard and people lie to themselves and each other and praise those crap desktops.

I can’t imagine how anyone in their right mind and having any experience with Linux can recommend a Windows/Mac user to switch to it and claim how it just works and is rock stable.

There’s really no other way to put it: Linux devs (not singling out Mint devs here) should get their shit together. Being nice and donating financially hasn’t gotten us anywhere, things seem to be getting more and more janky every 5 years and devs should really just face the reality that the suck right now compared to their predecessors.

Each Linux project should hire an angry boomer software developer like Linus Torvalds, lock themselves and the guy in the same room and have the guy review their code and fume and yell at them about how stupid and incompetent they are at their decisions. Seems to have done wonders for the kernel so far.

source: https://www.reddit.com/user/Substantial-Air3738/